Last week’s Federal Budget, predictably, saw the Albanese Government congratulating itself on its support for the arts, with the word ‘record’ being thrown around a lot. Actually, annual Commonwealth arts funding reached a record level of $1 billion in 2021-22 – under the Coalition. Nothing announced last week changes that.
Similarly, despite the rhetoric about dramatic changes in arts policy settings, in fact much in this Budget continues directions established under the previous government.
Continuing funding support for the National Collecting Institutions is welcome, and very much continues the work of the Coalition when in government.
On top of business-as-usual funding, we delivered $22 million for the new gallery at Bundanon in 2019; at the National Gallery, $20 million for lighting upgrades in 2020 and $28.6 million for capital works in May 2021; at the National Library, nearly $30 million for Trove between 2016 and 2023; and in 2021, $47 million for digitising and preservation of works held across eight National Collecting Institutions.
Similarly, the continuing support for attracting global screen productions – belatedly announced in this Budget after Labor equivocated for quite some time – builds on the Coalition’s work. The Morrison Government committed $540 million towards the Location Incentive Program, which delivered an effective 30% level of support to production budgets, matching globally competitive levels.
This program attracted 32 international productions to Australia, attracted private investment of over $2.84 billion and generated more than 20,500 employment opportunities for local cast and crew.
Read: Budget 2023-24: What’s in it for the arts?
Experienced observers of Arts Minister Tony Burke know it is always wise to test his rhetoric against the facts. Consider his much-hyped National Cultural Policy – the funding for which was included in last week’s Budget numbers.
When released in January this year, Mr Burke claimed there was $286 million in additional funding over four years. But actually, $45 million of this comes from cancelling the Coalition’s very successful Temporary Interruption Fund, meaning total new money is around $240 million or $60 million a year. Not to be sneezed at – but not in the same league as new arts funding announced by the Coalition in the last term exceeding $1.1 billion.
This kind of game-playing with arts budgets is an increasingly familiar feature of Burkean arts administration. Consider the perplexing appearance and subsequent disappearance of Minister Burke’s ‘Live Performance Support Fund’.
Announced in the October Budget as part of a $38.6 million ‘Supporting the Arts’ program, it was supposedly going to deliver funding for plays, concerts and festivals from November 2022 through to February 2023. But nothing more was heard of it – and last week’s Budget confirmed the demise of this program without a dollar being spent.
But the Federal Budget did highlight one clear difference between the parties. Labor is shifting money towards buildings in Canberra and more Commonwealth arts officials.
By contrast, the Coalition’s focus was stimulating as many new events, shows, festivals and productions as possible – and getting them attended by as many Australians as possible. In fact, 541 shows and events, all around Australia, were funded under our $200 million Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (RISE) Fund.
Allocating arts funding is not easy, and whatever you do there are disappointed people. Certainly those Australians who felt our nation was suffering from a dire shortage of Commonwealth arts officials will be much happier with Labor’s approach.
But if there is one thing that stands out in this Federal Budget, it is the lack of focus on getting more audiences to see more shows. That’s the main reason why I think this Budget is a missed opportunity.
